


Five Times Rumpelstiltskin Considered Sending Belle Home, and One Time He Did

by Fyre



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Five Times
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-26
Updated: 2012-03-26
Packaged: 2017-11-02 13:43:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/369624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fyre/pseuds/Fyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Does exactly what the title suggests :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Rumpelstiltskin Considered Sending Belle Home, and One Time He Did

1\. 

"What did you do?" Rumpelstiltskin demanded furiously.

Belle's eyes were wide and innocent. It was like looking at a three day old lamb. "You told me to launder your clothing," she said. "Did I do it wrong?"

"Wrong?" He held up his breeches, which had been comfortable and well-worn, and now looked a good deal smaller than they actually should. "Dearie, I might not be the largest man in the world, but if you think I can fit a leg in these now, you're sorely mistaken!"

She looked him up and down, her lips twitching. "Really? Have you tried?"

He blinked at her. "I beg your pardon?"

"They don't look too small," she replied, folding her arms in a gesture of stubbornness that he was fast coming to recognise. Normally, it was followed by the determined jutting out of her chin. "Have you even tried them?"

He glowered at her. "I didn't have a shoehorn to hand."

She raised her eyebrows, and then - there it was - lifted her chin. "I think you had just worn them for so long, you forgot what they were meant to be like when they were clean."

He waved his finger in front of her face. "Your insolence is not as charming as you might think."

Her lips were twitching again. "It wasn't insolence if I was just stating a fact," she said, and he wondered at which point she had stopped being afraid of him. 

He snorted in indignation, throwing the trousers down in a heap on the floor. "Do what you will with them," he snapped. "I have no use for them."

He turned and stormed away, wondering if it was too late to demand one of Sir Maurice's servants instead of his impertinent daughter. They, at least, might actually be capable of cleaning his clothes without ruining them. 

 

2.

"You know the rules."

"Yes, I do," Belle replied, stepping around him. "You said clean the dark castle."

He darted around in front of her again, blocking the door with his arm. "This room does not need to be cleaned."

"Is it in the dark castle?" she asked, giving him one of those piercing-eyed looks. 

"Now you're trifling with details."

"Well?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. "You gave me very specific instructions. Clean the dark castle. This is part of the dark castle, so I'm going to clean it." She reached for the handle and he swatted her on the wrist. 

"None of that!" he said. "This room is forbidden."

"Forbidden?" Belle's eyes lit up, and Rumpelstiltskin groaned inwardly. He should have remembered that most everyone woman had a little of Pandora in her. "Why? What's in there? Is it magical?"

"Because," he replied, ticking off the responses on his fingers, "Nothing you should be concerned with. And no."

She put her hands on her hips. "What's so special about this room?"

Rumpelstiltskin placed himself in front of both the handles and twisted a charm of sealing around the lock, just to make sure she wouldn't get in, while he was away on business. "Nothing special," he replied.

"If it wasn't special, you wouldn't be keeping me out," she said, tapping the middle of his chest with one finger. Her eyes widened in mock horror. "Unless you're keeping the bodies of all your previous maids in there."

Rumpelstiltskin gaped at her. "Your imagination is getting away from you," he said. "Off with you. This place is none of your business."

She made a face and flicked her duster at him, but went on her way.

Rumpelstiltskin breathed out slowly, wondering why the thought of a pretty girl in his bedroom made him so worried.

It really would have been so much easier to have a normal servant.

 

3\. 

"You moved it."

"No, I didn't," Belle said primly. She was folded up in a chair in front of the fire with a book. "It'll be exactly where you left it."

Rumpelstiltskin kicked at the air in annoyance. "Dear, if it was exactly where I left it, I would know where it was. It's not there, therefore, you must have moved it."

Blue eyes looked up at him above the book. "Did you check?"

He put his hands on his hips. "What do you mean 'did I check'?"

"Exactly what I said," she replied, smiling. "Did you check the last place you left it?"

"Of course I did! Where would it be but the wheel?"

She marked her place in her book and closed it. "I don't see any reason I would have moved your spindle."

"I can think of a thousand reasons," he retorted, aware that he sounded petulant, but too annoyed to bother modulating his tone. "And none of them make any more sense than the relocation of the puppets to the coal scuttle."

Belle made a face. "They went there because they're creepy," she said. "I feel like they're always watching me."

He didn't have the heart to tell her that was because they were. "And what, pray, did the spindle do to offend you?"

"Nothing," she replied with a sniff. "I told you I didn't move it."

"And who did? The puppets?"

Her lips pursed in a frown. "Well, it wasn't me."

He threw up his hands, any thought of a relaxing evening of spinning out of the window. "If you decide you remember where you hid it, then perhaps you can return it," he said, before storming out of the hall. 

"I didn't hide it!" she called after him. 

He didn't know what annoyed him more. The fact that she had argued with him or the fact that he later found his spindle in his laboratory, which reminded him that he had been working on increasing the consistency of his thread. He scowled at it, and deliberately transported it back to his wheel with magic. She didn't need to know she was right. She would become even more insufferable if she did.

 

4\. 

He could swear that he creaked when he walked.

Every time he came back from a long, arduous journey, he made the same mistake of leaving his clothing to be tended by his housekeeper's fair yet completely incapable hands. Every time, he was wearing a different pair of trousers, and now, not a single pair remained as they were. 

He stretched one leg, then the other as he descended the staircase from his chamber.

Somewhere ahead, he could hear Belle singing as she cleaned, and he considered the temptation of finding her, then shrinking her clothes around her body to see just how she liked it. It might even make her sing a little more in tune, he thought nastily.

The thought cheered him, so he quickened his pace, and he rounded the corner to confront her.

He was greeted by a ladder, and he looked up at a very shapely pair of thighs clad in trousers not dissimilar to his own. They curved up over an equally shapely backside, which was wiggling from side to side as Belle scrubbed enthusiastically at the highest panes of the window, still singing happily at the top of her voice.

Rumpelstiltskin swallowed hard.

So, apparently, she didn't mind tight clothing quite as much as he did.

Grateful that she hadn't noticed him, he slunk back around the corner and leaned against the wall, taking a deep breath.

Next time, he decided, definitely a servant. An ugly one.

 

5.

 

He flicked over the object on his plate with his knife.

Belle looked at him expectantly. 

He flicked it back, his nose wrinkling.

"I don't suppose you care to tell me what it is?"

She smiled at him. On anyone else, it would have been guileless, but on her, there was mischief in her eyes. "Not until you taste it," she replied. "I found a wonderful recipe. I'm sure you'll like it."

"Are you sure it wasn't the recipe for a poultice?" he asked doubtfully, prodding at the mass of congealed... something.

She swatted at his arm. "Aren't you curious?"

There, alas, she had hit the nail on the head.

He gave the food another prod.

"This is one mystery I feel I may leave uncovered," he said, pushing the plate a little away from him. 

"Oh." The sound was small and disappointed and completely pathetic. Belle's whole face had crumpled as if he had thrown the plate across the room. "I thought it would be a nice surprise."

He eyed her suspiciously. She was not one to take slights to her cookery to heart, especially not after they both had suffered after her first attempt at cooking poultry. "If you tell me what it is, I may consider it."

She gave a forlorn little sniff. "That would ruin the surprise."

He narrowed his eyes at her. "Did you find my poison cabinet?"

She looked affronted. "If I did, I wouldn't tell you," she said, making a face.

He looked at the plate again. He wondered what could be so special that she would be so upset at his lack of appetite. It looked like some kind of small parcel of pastry, completely lathered in thick, lumpy sauce. 

"Am I allowed a clue?"

She widened her eyes and shook her head. "It's an experiment," she said. "Something I've never tried before."

That wasn't _at all_ foreboding. 

"And it's thoroughly cooked?"

"Until bits started going black," she said, nodding.

"That means nothing, dear," he said, skewering it carefully with a fork. She made a small, eager sound, leaning both elbows on the table and watching him raptly, and that gave him pause. "Why so keen to see me eat?"

"Do you like to see if your experiments work?" she challenged.

That, he could understand, so he bit the pastry off the fork and chewed.

Belle burst out laughing at the look on his face, then again when he fished into his mouth and withdrew a folded scrap of paper, which had been tucked into the pastry.

"And what is this?" he asked, glaring.

"Open it," Belle said, eyes dancing.

He unfolded it and groaned inwardly. There was writing in Belle's neat little hand: _Experiment successful - R will eat anything put in front of him, if curiosity fanned enough_.

He turned his glare on her again. "Dear," he said. "That was not curiosity."

She cupped her chin in her hands and gazed at him. "What was it then?"

He screwed up the note. "You'll have to discover that yourself," he said, pushing his chair back. "Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to get some real food."

She reached out and caught his arm and smiled. "There is some," she said. "I was just bored in the kitchen this morning and thought I should have a little fun." She tugged him back down into his seat. "I'll get it."

He huffed indignantly, steepling his fingers and glaring at the plate, until she was out of sight, and only then did he unroll the tiny note again. She was learning far too much about him. If he was curious, then she was cursed by the same affliction tenfold. No servant should ever be curious about their master. But then, she really was no servant, and that was where the problem arose.

 

One

She kissed him. It was a mistake. A foolish, stupid mistake. It showed her for who she really was, who she had to be. He had believed them to be content, but now, she had overturned everything and his world was whirling.

He laid his hands and brow against the door of the dungeon.

She was locked inside, again, for the first time in months.

She deserved to be there.

He repeated it over and over.

She deserved it. She deserved it. She betrayed him. She was in the Queen’s service. What other reason could there be? She was a traitor, and so the stone cell was hers again, and she deserved it. She did. 

She was silent.

He was too, but he felt like he should be screaming.

Why had she come back with her soft words and gentle touch and her kiss, if it wasn’t to weaken him and tear him down? Why would anyone come back to him? His wife had left, Bae had left. Why would anyone come back? Why would she come back?

She could have gone, returned to her village, her family. He had allowed it. He had released her. He let her go, even though everything in him was screaming that he had to keep her close, and now, she had returned, and it was all wrong.

He sank to his knees, his hands trembling against the door. 

She came back, but by all the Gods, he wished she hadn’t.


End file.
